Preface

For stitching panoramas you most probably won't get in contact with PTStitcher frequently, since the scripting is more or less completely done by the various GUI front-ends and some tools like PanoCube.

However, there are several occasions where you might need to write or at least understand the scripts or call PTStitcher directly (for some batch tasks f.e.).

Updates

The PTStitcher source code was never published, hence there are no changes possible to certain functions. But since a considerable part of it's functionality is in pano12 library, PTStitcher benefits from every update of this core library.

You can take PTStitcher from any of the panotools distribution on one of the Mirrors. In order to use new functionality you need a recent copy of pano12 library. Note that only win32, i386 Linux and mac classic binary versions were ever made available, so you are out of luck if you use OS X or a 64bit operating system.

There is an open source replacement for PTStitcher called nona in the hugin project which has much (but not all) of the PTStitcher features. Another open source replacement is PTmender, part of the pano12 project at sourceforge.

Intro

PTStitcher is script driven. The scripts are in pure text format and can be edited with any text or programming editor (on windows notepad will do).

They are processed on a line by line basis. Each line starts with a special character (case sensitive) that indicates the meaning of the rest of the line. All other first in line characters are ignored and considered comments.

Features

Most features of PTStitcher are conveniently accessible by the usual GUIs (see top), but some are not.

Acessible by Script or other Tool

assembling 6 cube faces to an equirectangular panorama can be done by GUI but is more conveniently done by script, batch file or PanoCube Plus.

Example Script

The updated original example script with lots of comments is below. Copied from Jim Watters' page

############# Example Script ##########################
# to run PTStitcher
#
#
# Only lines starting with 'p','o', i', or 'm' are read,
# so you can add comments and info as you like by using
# other line starting characters.
# The * character at the first of a line indicated the end of the script file.
# The stitcher script must contain:
# one 'p'- line describing the output image (eg Panorama)
# one 'o'-line for each input image
# one 'i' line for each input image that is optional
# the 'm'-line is optional and allows you to specify modes for the optimization.
# the 'C'-line is optional and allows morphing of control points.

'C'-line options

# 'C' lines
# ----------------
# Morphing of control point lines
# One line per point
# Created automatically by optimizer
#
# i0 image
# x363.726 starting x point position
# y125.738 starting y point position
# X363.838 morphed x point position
# Y125.618 morphed y point position
C i0 x363.726 y125.738 X363.838 Y125.618
*
Every thing after * is ignored.

Tutorials

Information on how to create and use PTStitcher scripts can be found on the web and on the wiki: